RECOVERED HISTORY

THE BASEMENT EVIDENCE OF COLUMBINE

ALAN PRENDERGAST, WESTWORD, DENVER - Welcome, once more, to the basement
tapes -- nearly four hours of posing, boasting and bitching by the
obnoxious gods of self-awareness, two teenage killers-to-be named [Eric]
Harris and [Dylan] Klebold. The footage was shot in the last weeks of
their short lives, the final segment just a few hours before the rampage
at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, that left fifteen dead and
seriously injured two dozen more. Seized by Jefferson County
investigators right after the shootings, the tapes have been sitting in
an evidence vault for the past seven years, seen by almost no one --
except, of course, a small army of cops, attorneys, reporters, victims'
families, expert witnesses and assorted hangers-on.

That could change soon. Following a surprising decision by the Colorado
Supreme Court last fall, which held that the tapes are part of the
"records" generated by the Columbine investigation, Jefferson County
Sheriff Ted Mink has been wrestling with the biggest quandary of his
law-enforcement career. Should he refuse to release the basement tapes
on the grounds that their dissemination is still (in the words of the
state's Criminal Justice Records Act) "contrary to the public interest"
-- and thus prolong a five-year court battle with the Denver Post? Or
should he make the hate-filled rants, along with other long-suppressed
writings and recordings taken from the killers' homes, available to the
world at last? . . .

The most intriguing, hush-hush item from the Harris home is probably
evidence item #201, a green steno book found in a desk drawer. The book
doesn't belong to Eric or God but to Wayne Harris, who used it to write
down various matters concerning his son's mental health, errant behavior
and interactions with neighbors and authorities. As a result of the
confidential settlements reached in lawsuits brought against the
Harrises and Klebolds by some victims' families, virtually everyone
who's ever seen the steno book can't comment on its contents.

We do know one thing about item #201: It documents more contacts between
the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the Harrises over their son's
behavior years before the shooting than the sheriff's office has ever
acknowledged. In 2004, investigators working for the state attorney
general's office used the steno book to track a complaint against Eric
that dated back to 1997, a case for which the department paperwork had
disappeared. The deputy on the case, Tim Walsh, was the same officer who
arrested Harris and Klebold for breaking into a van in 1998; interviewed
by investigators after the shootings in 1999, Walsh made no mention of
the 1997 case. . . 

Nothing akin to the green steno book was found at the Klebold home. Tom
and Susan Klebold did talk to investigators; five years later, they even
gave one media interview, to David Brooks of the New York Times. "They
say they had no intimations of Dylan's mental state," Brooks wrote. That
assertion is spectacularly at odds with accounts from school employees
-- about chronic disciplinary problems, perceived "anger issues" Dylan
might have had with his father, and, most of all, a class essay Dylan
wrote about a trenchcoated avenger who slaughters a group of "preps," a
scene so vicious that his teacher felt compelled to discuss it with his
parents -- but Brooks didn't press the issue.

Written only weeks before the massacre, the essay wasn't Klebold's first
foray into violent revenge fantasies. He wrote about killing sprees in
his own journal, as well as thoughts of suicide, depression and his
dream of ascending to a higher state of existence. The sheriff's report
provides only brief references to this material, which has been more
tightly guarded than the Book of God.

http://www.westword.com/issues/2006-04-13/news/news_full.html